Is moon base really the 'weirdest' Newt Gingrich idea? Maybe not.
Newt Gingrich wants to establish a colony on the moon, in case you haven鈥檛 heard. At a campaign stop on Florida鈥檚 Space Coast Thursday he promised that the US would have a permanent lunar base by the end of his second term in the Oval Office.
He talked about it as if it would be a lunar Plymouth, mankind鈥檚 brave foray into a lunar unknown, though he himself did not make that direct comparison. He even put out some ideas as to how the place should be governed.
When Moon Base Gingrich holds enough people, it should apply for statehood, he said.
鈥淚 think the moon primary would come late in the [campaign] season,鈥� he said, smiling. This was either hubristic or charmingly self-aware, depending on how one views the prospect of the former speaker in the White House.
As Gingrich noted Wednesday, he鈥檚 outlined his ideas for space self-government before. As a young member of Congress in 1981, he introduced a bill he now refers to as the Northwest Ordinance for Space, but back then went by the more prosaic name of National Aeronautics and Space Policy Act of 1981.
BuzzFeed has dug up of this legislation from the Library of Congress, and it鈥檚 pretty interesting. Much of it consists of an order to NASA to set 30-year goals for everything from a new 鈥渙perational world information system鈥� (Newt invented the Internet!) to manned Mars and moon missions.
Title IV covers 鈥淕overnment of Space Territories.鈥� It begins in a sweeping manner: all persons residing in any US space community (which could be anywhere from the moon to Jupiter, we guess) 鈥渟hall be entitled to the protection of the Constitution of the United States.鈥�
Wow 鈥� this means that any terror suspect caught at a US moon base couldn鈥檛 be shipped to 骋耻补苍迟谩苍补尘辞, right? Also, any baby born to an illegal US moon base immigrant would be a US citizen, raising the possibility of moon birth tourism.
The second section of Title IV says that when a US space colony holds 20,000 people, it will be able to hold a convention to establish a constitution and form of self-government for itself. Kind of like Philadelphia in 1787, only with external oxygen supplies.
Title IV鈥檚 third section establishes that whenever said space colony holds the same number of people as the least populous US state (right now, that鈥檚 Wyoming, at 544,270) it will be admitted as a US state 鈥渙n an equal footing with the original states.鈥�
That raises a question 鈥� if you鈥檙e the senator from the moon, would you get in trouble with constituents for not traveling home often enough to take the pulse of Tranquility Base? Because you probably couldn鈥檛 do that Friday-to-Monday.
Anyway, Gingrich himself kind of poked fun at himself for all this, saying that he鈥檚 old enough to have read 鈥淢issiles & Rockets Magazine鈥� as a kid, and that the whole thing might be the 鈥渨eirdest鈥� policy idea he鈥檚 ever proposed.
But let鈥檚 be honest 鈥� he鈥檚 running a Florida primary, and Florida鈥檚 Space Coast right now suffers from high unemployment. Gingrich might be crazy like a space fox here.聽
Slate鈥檚 Dave Weigel wrote about Gingrich鈥檚 speech under the head
鈥淚t鈥檚 an idea that makes the New York/Washington-Alinskyite media guffaw. It also happens to be a pander to local voters that no one will try to make,鈥� wrote Mr. Weigel.
After all, in the late 1960s, NASA drew up plans to establish a moon base by 1980 and send men to Mars by 1983. But these were cancelled by then-President Richard Nixon, notes Space.com in for space exploration.
Nixon was worried that the government spending was too high 鈥� and NASA was a convenient target.
